Case Studies — Ariba, Inc

CustomerSat Connect360™ with PeopleSoft CRM enables Real-time Responsiveness and Increased Customer Retention

The Company

Ariba (Nasdaq: ARBA) offers a powerful suite of solutions to help companies manage spend so that expenses fall faster than revenues in down times, and grow more slowly than revenues in up times. Ariba Spend Management Solutions significantly improves the bottom line results of a business. Since its founding in 1996, Ariba has remained at the forefront of the Internet evolution, providing easy-to-implement, robust online commerce solutions for proven cost savings and return on investment. Ariba now leads the Enterprise Spend Management (ESM) market. Enterprise Spend Management is a new class of solutions that focus on delivering a closed loop of control and leverage over a company's spend, including assessing spending activities, conducting effective sourcing and capturing and reconciling spend enterprise-wide. Ariba® Spend Management™ delivers results quickly while providing a sustainable spend management capability.

Overview

Ariba has long maintained an industry leadership position due in large part to its focus on customer satisfaction. With customer response centers in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific, Ariba staffs a full-service technical support team, which fields inquiries from customers around the globe via telephone, Web or email. All cases are managed through a PeopleSoft (formerly Vantive) Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.

In 2000, prior to implementing the CustomerSat solution, Ariba tracked customer satisfaction through quarterly email surveys, asking customers using technical support during the past three months about their support experiences. Customer feedback was often fuzzy: cases could be as much as 90 days old by the time feedback was gathered. As Ariba’s business expanded with the addition of several new solutions, and with increases in both the diversity and volume of customer calls, Ariba’s need for a robust, real-time feedback system became mission critical.

To meet their demands, they required a solution that would:

• Deliver continuous, real-time feedback from all technical support customers
• Provide complete 360 degree integration with their PeopleSoft CRM system
• Be flexible, customizable, and easy to implement
• Deliver robust, web-based, and actionable reports based on unique customer segmentation
• Provide access to “sub-users” across the enterprise through customizable dashboards

The Integrated CustomerSat Solution

Ariba turned to CustomerSat’s Enterprise Customer Experience Management (ECEM™) system with Connect™ to meet all of these requirements -- and more. Since 2000, CustomerSat has empowered Ariba to efficiently serve its growing customer base. Working closely with Ariba’s technical staff, CustomerSat Professional Services implemented a transaction-based customer satisfaction system using Connect to integrate seamlessly with Ariba’s PeopleSoft CRM system.

On a continuous basis, Ariba customers are invited to rate and comment on their technical support experience within 24 hours after the case is closed. The ECEM system deploys a personalized survey invitation via email to each customer after the case is resolved, in accordance to business rules set by Ariba. When the case ticket is closed, CustomerSat Connect automatically collects pre-defined customer and ticket data information from the PeopleSoft system and uploads the data into CustomerSat’s hosted ECEM system.

CustomerSat Connect360™ Delivers Feedback to PeopleSoft

In 2001, the integration was expanded further using CustomerSat Connect360™. Not only is the survey delivery process integrated and automated, but individual customer responses are fed back into the PeopleSoft CRM system. Now when a customer calls or emails technical support, the Ariba support representative has complete access to their past feedback – including verbatim comments.

This complete integration has helped Ariba further enhance personalized, effective service delivery and improve overall customer satisfaction. Personalization of the survey invitation is a key component in generating survey responses from customers.

Real-time Analytics & Reports

A wide range of real-time analyses and reports are available to Ariba’s authorized personnel at any time in Ariba’s password-protected account; they are always current as of the most recent survey response. CustomerSat’s robust reporting system can display the survey information based on any number of variables, such as geography, call center ID, representative ID, product line, etc. These queries can be viewed in a dozen different chart formats, including pie, bar, line and donut charts, with complete ability to customize fonts, colors, and all other chart elements.

Managing Users — Controlling Access to Results

The ECEM system allows hierarchical access to survey results, allowing a master account holder at Ariba to administer levels of access for other users. Through this feature, different regional and product managers may access and view customer feedback that is pertinent to their particular job responsibilities.

For example, a manager of a call center in Europe may need to see the survey data that involves calls handled throughout Europe as well as or within a specific region. Similarly, a product manager for the Ariba Buyer™ product line may only need customer feedback on that particular product. In addition, managers can compare these segmented views with the global view of data. The “controlled access and managed users” features make data analysis manageable, more efficient, and allows or cross-segment comparisons.

Real-time Action Alerts

In certain situations, key Ariba personnel want to be alerted immediately about the results of a survey. For example, if a customer responds with a “low satisfaction” rating to a question asking for overall impressions of a technical support experience, Ariba wants to know about it and respond to the problem immediately. In these instances, an email message is automatically generated by the CustomerSat ECEM and sent to an appropriate representative at Ariba, who can then take action to resolve the issue.

Results & Benefits Summary

RESULTS

The CustomerSat solution has delivered tangible, measurable results that have helped Ariba retain valued customers and build stronger relationships with them.

Specifically, the CustomerSat solution allow Ariba to:

• Quickly determine level of satisfaction with each technical support service delivery and resolve issues immediately, improving overall customer satisfaction ratings
• Provide enterprise-wide access to actionable analysis reports
• Target actions, processes and resources that meet and exceed customer expectations
• Strengthen customer relationships

“The ECEM solution has provided a perfect way to measure and actually understand trends, so we can take targeted action before things blow up,” said Ariba’s Director of Global Technical Support. “We’ve found that sometimes a simple follow-up phone call or email after the case is closed can be the difference between a customer being satisfied or very satisfied. So now, even if my representatives are 100% sure the solution worked, I tell them to give that extra call or send that extra email. It makes a difference.”

Ariba’s feedback solution will continue be a critical component of improving customer satisfaction and retention by basing actions on direct, real-time customer feedback.